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15 Famous Writers’ Fascinating and Unusual Hobbies

Published June 20, 2016 | Last Updated May 21, 2020 By Nicole Bianchi 35 Comments

Used paintbrushes and tubes of paint on wood table smeared with paint

Want to improve your writing? Master a new hobby.

Leo Tolstoy played chess. Ayn Rand collected stamps. Other famous writers liked to take a break from writing to play a round of golf or try a new recipe or paint with watercolors.

These hobbies not only gave them new experiences to write about but also helped them develop skills that made them better writers.

How Hobbies Help You Improve Your Writing

Flannery O’Connor noted in her book Mystery and Manners,

I know a good many fiction writers who paint, not because they’re any good at painting, but because it helps their writing. It forces them to look at things. Fiction writing is very seldom a matter of saying things; it is a matter of showing things…Any discipline can help your writing: logic, mathematics, theology, and of course and particularly drawing. Anything that helps you to see, anything that makes you look.

Science suggests that O’Connor’s observations are correct. A fascinating 2006 article from Fortune magazine reveals, “Your brain, it turns out, isn’t a fixed mass that shapes your behavior. Your behavior also shapes your brain. If a gardener takes up a serious interest in engineering, for instance, her neurons form new pathways between previously isolated regions.”

The article goes on to quote Dr. Alvaro Pascual-Leone, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School: “It may well be a mistake to do just one thing. If you practice multiple things you actually get better at any one of those things.”

Need some inspiration for a new hobby to pick up? In today’s post, I’ve put together a list of fifteen famous writers and their fascinating (and sometimes unusual) hobbies.

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 1. Dame Agatha Christie, the archeologist
(1890 – 1976)

The British murder-mystery writer Agatha Christie had quite an adventurous life. In 1930, she married the prominent archaeologist, Max Mallowan.

She accompanied him as he traveled throughout the Middle East and assisted him on his archeological digs (she cleaned some of the artifacts with her face cream, actually a very smart move as they are now some of the best-preserved ancient ivory artifacts in the world).

Photo of Agatha Christie adventuring with her husband, Max Mallowan
Agatha Christie adventuring with her husband, Max Mallowan. Public Domain photo via Wikipedia

These experiences inspired several of her novels: Appointment with Death, Murder in Mesopotamia, Murder on the Orient Express, and Death Comes as the End. Christie’s short memoir Come, Tell Me How You Live recounted her experiences on an archeological dig in Syria and shared photographs that she took to document her travels.

2. Victor Hugo, the artist
(1802 – 1885)

Famous for his novels Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, French writer Victor Hugo was also a talented artist, producing over 4,000 drawings during his lifetime.

At first, Hugo treated painting only as a pastime, but he eventually pursued it more seriously, and his paintings were praised by the leading artists of his era. He usually only shared his paintings privately, however, afraid they might overshadow his literary achievements.

Victor Hugo's painting "Ville avec le pont de Tumbledown" (1847)
Victor Hugo’s painting “Ville avec le pont de Tumbledown” (1847)

Many other famous writers have shared Hugo’s love of drawing. The American poet E. E. Cummings painted every day, producing a body of work that included about 1,600 sketches, drawings, watercolors, and oil paintings.

Other writers like J. R. R. Tolkien, T. S. Eliot, William Faulkner, Rudyard Kipling, Beatrix Potter, and William Makepeace Thackery illustrated their own work.

3. Sylvia Plath, the beekeeper
(1932 – 1963)

In 1962, American writer and poet Sylvia Plath and her husband, Ted Hughes (also a successful writer), decided to take up beekeeping. Plath’s father, Otto, had been an entomologist who specialized in bees. In a letter to her mother in June, Plath announced,

Today, guess what, we became beekeepers! We went to the local meeting last week…We all wore masks and it was thrilling…Mr. Pollard let us have an old hive for nothing which we painted white and green, and today he brought over the swarm of docile Italian hybrid bees we ordered and installed them…I feel very ignorant, but shall try to read up and learn all I can.

Shortly before her tragic death, Plath wrote a series of five poems about bees, inspired by her experiences with beekeeping.

4. Emily Dickinson, the baker
(1830 – 1866)

Emily Dickinson, another American poet, loved spending time in the kitchen. An accomplished baker, she won second place at the 1856 Amherst Cattle Show for her round loaf of Indian and Rye bread.

Dickinson enjoyed baking treats for her family and friends and would even lower a basket of cakes from her window to neighborhood children in the street below. On the backs of recipes and food wrappers, she scribbled lines of poetry.

5. Leo Tolstoy, the chess player
(1828 – 1910)

Best known for his sweeping epic novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Russian writer Leo Tolstoy was also an avid chess player. He learned how to play as a young boy and carefully recorded many of his games.

His biographer Aylmer Maude, with whom he often played, observed that Tolstoy “had no book-knowledge of it, but had played much and was alert and ingenious.”

Russian writer Leo Tolstoy (left) playing chess with the son of his friend and publisher Vladimir Chertkov who took this picture in Yasnaya Polyana in 1907.
Russian writer Leo Tolstoy (left) playing chess with the son of his friend and publisher Vladimir Chertkov who took this picture in Yasnaya Polyana in 1907. Photo courtesy of Topfoto and chessgames.com.

6. Ernest Hemingway, the outdoorsman
(1899 – 1961)

The Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway loved spending time outdoors, hunting and fishing. He went on several African safaris and was also an accomplished deep sea fisherman in the Carribean. In 1935, he reeled in the largest marlin caught to date.

His adventures served as the inspiration for many of his books and short stories, and Hemingway is said to have once stated, “In order to write about life first you must live it.” He certainly lived up to that quote.

7. Jack Kerouac, the fantasy sports enthusiast
(1922 – 1969)

As a teenager, American novelist and poet Jack Kerouac invented several fantasy sports. He continued playing his fantasy baseball game even as an adult and filled notebooks with detailed statistics and analysis.

A New York Times article explains, “He obsessively played a fantasy baseball game of his own invention, charting the exploits of made-up players like Wino Love, Warby Pepper, Heinie Twiett, Phegus Cody and Zagg Parker, who toiled on imaginary teams named either for cars (the Pittsburgh Plymouths and New York Chevvies, for example) or for colors (the Boston Grays and Cincinnati Blacks).” See more photos of his notebooks here.

Kerouac was himself a talented athlete. He played football while studying at Columbia University and wrote sports articles for the student newspaper.

8. Madeleine L’Engle, the pianist
(1918 – 2007)

The American writer Madeleine L’Engle is best known for her young adult fiction and Newberry award-winning book A Wrinkle in Time. Whenever L’Engle found herself struggling with writer’s block, she would play the piano. In an interview, she explained,

Playing the piano is for me a way of getting unstuck. If I’m stuck in life or in what I’m writing, if I can I sit down and play the piano. What it does is break the barrier that comes between the conscious and the subconscious mind. The conscious mind wants to take over and refuses to let the subconscious mind work, the intuition. So if I can play the piano, that will break the block, and my intuition will be free to give things up to my mind, my intellect. So it’s not just a hobby. It’s a joy.

9. Flannery O’Connor, the aviculturist
(1925 – 1964)

Known for her Southern Gothic style of writing, Flannery O’Connor was also a dedicated aviculturist. As a young girl, she raised chickens, including one that could walk backward. The six-year-old O’Connor and her unusual pet chicken were featured in a newsreel.

In 1952, she brought her first peacocks and peahens to her farm in Georgia.

O’Connor wrote about her love of peacocks in her 1961 essay “Living with a Peacock.” She declared, “I intend to stand firm and let the peacocks multiply, for I am sure that, in the end, the last word will be theirs.” Peacocks often appeared in her short stories.

10. Mark Twain, the inventor
(1835 – 1910)

Friends with Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison (even appearing in one of Edison’s films), the American writer Mark Twain tried his hand at inventing as well.

He patented three different inventions: the elastic hook clasp, a scrapbook with self-adhesive pages (Twain was a dedicated scrapbooker), and an educational game called the “memory-builder.” The scrapbook invention was particularly successful and sold over 25,000 copies.

11. P. G. Wodehouse, the golfer
(1881 – 1975)

The British humorist P. G. Wodehouse loved spending time on the links. He wrote twenty-five short stories about golf, all narrated by a character called The Oldest Member.

Wodehouse once wrote, “Whenever you see me with a furrowed brow you can be sure that what is on my mind is the thought that if only I had taken up golf earlier and devoted my whole time to it instead of fooling about writing stories and things, I might have got my handicap down to under eighteen.”

12. H. G. Wells, the war gamer
(1866 – 1946)

In 1913, British science fiction author H. G. Wells published Little Wars, one of the first books (complete with photographs) to codify a set of rules for war gaming. “You have only to play at Little Wars three or four times to realise just what a blundering thing Great War must be,” Wells remarked.

A photo from H. G. Wells's book Little Wars that demonstrates war gaming.
A photo from H. G. Wells’s book Little Wars that demonstrates war gaming.

The writer Colin Middleton Murry visited H. G. Wells at his home and observed one of the war games. Murry wrote, “He [Wells] rushed round frantically, winding up clockwork trains, constructing bridges and fortifications, firing pencils out of toy cannons. It was all quite hysterical – quite unlike any grown-up behaviour I had ever known.”

13. J. R. R. Tolkien, the conlang enthusiast
(1892 – 1973)

J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of the beloved fantasy novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, was a brilliant philologist who studied numerous languages and taught Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University. He began constructing languages as a teenager, and this passion continued throughout his entire life.

In 1916, he wrote a letter to his future wife, Edith, telling her that he had been working on his “nonsense fairy language – to its improvement. I often long to work at it and don’t let myself ’cause though I love it so it does seem such a mad hobby!”

One of Tolkien's constructed languages.
One of Tolkien’s constructed languages.

And, yet, it was thanks to this hobby that he ended up creating his Middle Earth mythology. In his 1930 lecture “A Secret Vice,” Tolkien explained, “The making of language and mythology are related functions. Your language construction will breed a mythology.”

14. Ayn Rand, the stamp collector
(1905 – 1982)

The author of the best-selling novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand spent most of her time writing and promoting her philosophy of Objectivism. However, she was also a passionate stamp collector.

In an article for The Minkus Stamp Journal in 1971, she wrote, “If I feel tired after a whole day of writing, I spend an hour with my stamp albums and it makes me able to resume writing for the rest of the evening. A stamp album is a miraculous brain-restorer.”

On April 22, 1999, the United States postal service issued a stamp commemorating Ayn Rand and her literary work. It was a particularly fitting tribute.

15. Beatrix Potter, the mycologist
(1866 – 1943)

Famous for her children’s stories and beautiful watercolor illustrations, the British writer Beatrix Potter was also keenly interested in the natural sciences, especially botany. She developed a theory for the germination of fungi and was the first person in Britain and one of the first in the world to understand the symbiotic relationship between algae and fungi.

Unfortunately, because she was a woman and lacked formal scientific training, many scientific societies refused to take her work seriously. Her research was only fully appreciated after her death.

Potter donated her detailed scientific drawings to the Armitt Museum and Library, and mycologists still use them today to identify fungi.

The Takeaway

Crumpled piece of blue paper on top of a sketch book covered in drawings

Julia Cameron observes in her book The Artist’s Way,

In order to create, we draw from our inner well. This inner well, an artistic reservoir, is ideally like a well-stocked trout pond…Any extended period or piece of work draws heavily on our artistic well. As artists, we must learn to be self-nourishing. We must become alert enough to consciously replenish our creative resources as we draw on them — to restock the trout pond, so to speak.

Hobbies are one way to refill that well. They give you a fun way to redeem your free time while helping you get your creative juices flowing.

Best of all, no matter which hobbies you seriously pursue, you are teaching yourself a new set of skills that you will be able to use across every area of your life and especially in your writing.

What are your hobbies? How do your hobbies inspire your writing? If you enjoyed this post, please leave a comment below and share the post with a fellow writer.

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Comments

  1. larry angelo says

    July 18, 2019 at 11:07 am

    Just stumbled onto your website. Two writers to add to your list (and please correct my spelling) are playwright August Strindberg, who was a fine and serious painter, and novelist Hermann Hesse, who produced excellent watercolors. There is a point at which what is made has such merit that it moves beyond being a pasttime and becomes a second creative achievement.
    The drawings of Victor Hugo are really impressive. What I have heard of the compositions for piano by philosopher Frederick Nietzsche are not; they are technically correct, but seem no more than student compositions. But they are much too complex to be called a hobby of his.
    The question is, how much available time and enabling money is needed for writers (or anyone) to pursue these expressive pursuits?

    Reply
  2. S. Thomas says

    December 25, 2018 at 7:03 am

    An interesting article, thank you for sharing. However, I must point out that the dates for Victor Hugo are wrong. He was born in 1802 and died in 1885.

    Reply
    • Nicole Bianchi says

      December 25, 2018 at 9:42 am

      Thanks for catching that! I just edited the dates. 🙂

      Reply
  3. Swati says

    July 4, 2017 at 11:54 am

    Very very interesting

    Reply
  4. Lisa Sell says

    August 3, 2016 at 11:57 am

    Loved this post! I think as writers we can get too caught up in the mantra ‘You must write every day’ and burn out. Hobbies are important as relaxation and for keeping the brain active in other ways.

    I often find that my hobbies are creative anyway so the creative juices are always topped up and I’m ready with new ideas for the next writing session.

    Great post and blog!

    Reply
    • Nicole Bianchi says

      August 5, 2016 at 12:25 pm

      Thank you so much, Lisa! 🙂 Yes, so true! After several days of writing, I need to take a deep breath and recharge. Hobbies are such a wonderful way to do that. Love what you wrote about your hobbies getting your creative juices flowing.

      Reply
  5. Ashley Brooke says

    August 3, 2016 at 10:41 am

    This is really interesting! Thank you for sharing!

    Reply
    • Nicole Bianchi says

      August 5, 2016 at 12:22 pm

      Thank you, Ashley! 🙂

      Reply
  6. Justin says

    August 3, 2016 at 10:18 am

    Very interesting and thought-provoking. Thank you for sharing.

    Reply
    • Nicole Bianchi says

      August 5, 2016 at 12:21 pm

      Thanks, Justin! 🙂 Glad you enjoyed it!

      Reply
  7. Kandja Sylla says

    August 2, 2016 at 11:05 pm

    This is a great article! I love knowing the hobbies of these famous writers. I somehow came to know them in a different light aside from their works. You’re so right about hobbies–they help flow our creative juices. Thanks for the share! xx

    http://www.prettyweirdbombshell.com

    Reply
    • Nicole Bianchi says

      August 3, 2016 at 1:04 am

      Thanks for your comment, Kandja! 🙂 Yes, knowing about these hobbies helps me appreciate their work even more now! It is really fascinating to see what they were interested in when they weren’t writing. Hobbies are so important for creatives.

      Reply
  8. Miranda says

    August 2, 2016 at 8:01 pm

    Great history lessoon here. Thanks for sharing!

    Reply
    • Nicole Bianchi says

      August 2, 2016 at 8:05 pm

      Thanks for reading, Miranda! 🙂

      Reply
  9. Paula Niziolek says

    August 2, 2016 at 6:30 pm

    Fun fun post! I’m not a writer but an avid reader and loved hearing about some of my favorite authors hobbies. I have quite a few – knitting, sewing, painting from time to time, cooking, baking, gardening, and small farm puttering to name a few.

    Reply
    • Nicole Bianchi says

      August 2, 2016 at 6:51 pm

      Thanks for your comment, Paula! 🙂 I’m glad you enjoyed the article! Those are quite a lot of hobbies. Sounds like have several in common with famous authors. 😉

      Reply
  10. Arpita says

    June 27, 2016 at 10:58 pm

    Loved reading the different hobbies. In interested to see many writers were hobbyist painters. I loved the Potter fungus illustration. Great idea for a post Nicole ????????

    Reply
    • Nicole Bianchi says

      June 28, 2016 at 3:28 pm

      Hi, Arpita! 🙂 Thanks so much for your comment! Yes, it seems drawing was a favorite hobby. 😀

      Reply
  11. Karli says

    June 27, 2016 at 3:15 pm

    This was a super fun read! It’s neat to see what the authors did and how it affected their writing! 🙂

    Reply
    • Nicole Bianchi says

      June 27, 2016 at 4:43 pm

      Thanks, Karli! 🙂 Happy you enjoyed it! I love finding out these interesting facts about their personal lives.

      Reply
  12. Eva Pauline says

    June 24, 2016 at 3:31 pm

    I wonder if writers have other hobbies, or those who have hobbies are creatives who will eventually find writing as a way to verbalize their love for creative things.

    Reply
    • Nicole Bianchi says

      June 24, 2016 at 11:36 pm

      Such a thought-provoking question, Eva! It would be interesting to see how many of these writers were writing creatively from childhood or if they became serious writers later on in their lives. Thanks for your comment!

      Reply
  13. Brittany Zayas says

    June 24, 2016 at 11:02 am

    Loved this–I knew about Hemingway, but not about the others. Interesting to think how all their hobbies probably affected their writing. I don’t know how stamp collecting affected Rand though….such a weird and now old fashioned hobby.
    My hobbies are drawing, as you know, and aimless historical research.

    Reply
    • Nicole Bianchi says

      June 24, 2016 at 11:31 pm

      Thanks for your comment, Brittany! Love your hobbies. 🙂 I actually collected stamps when I was younger, haha. It’s kind of like art collecting, in a way. I can see how Rand’s analytical brain would have enjoyed it. 😀

      Reply
  14. Cynthia Pereira says

    June 23, 2016 at 7:01 am

    Great article Nicole. I used to have a lot of hobbies, some more serious than others. I collected stamps when I was younger, also rocks. My most serious interest outside literature has been art. I love seeing art in the flesh. On the physical side of things I did karate for many years, I only stopped when I had children. I really enjoyed your post!

    Reply
    • Nicole Bianchi says

      June 24, 2016 at 11:17 pm

      Thanks so much, Cynthia! 🙂 I collected stamps when I was younger too. That is so cool that you did karate! I’ve always wanted to do a martial art. I wonder if there were any famous writers who were also martial artists. 😀

      Reply
  15. Jillian Pearl says

    June 22, 2016 at 12:37 pm

    I enjoy cross stitch. It’s a chance to create a lasting piece of art. I give away half of what I make and keep the rest. The sewing motion is soothing. I also like riding my bicycle on the local trails, watching the animals, weather, and people. I haven’t gone on a ride for a long time. I better get back to it ☺ Thanks for the fun post.

    Reply
    • Nicole Bianchi says

      June 22, 2016 at 1:34 pm

      Hi, Jillian! 🙂 Thanks for your comment! That is wonderful that you are able to use your hobby to make gifts for others. Bike riding is so fun too. I love getting out in nature and going for long walks, but I haven’t gone bike riding in a while either. This is making me want to! 😀

      Reply
  16. Resh Susan says

    June 22, 2016 at 12:18 am

    This was fun to read. I used to be really active in extra curriculars and hobbies. Now I can think of only reading as a hobby

    Reply
    • Nicole Bianchi says

      June 22, 2016 at 10:28 am

      Glad you enjoyed it, Resh! It can be very difficult to find time for lots of different hobbies. I think Bookstagram counts as a hobby, though — that one definitely takes up a lot of my time. 🙂

      Reply

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Hi, I’m Nicole! I help creatives, business owners, and writers take their writing and copywriting to the next level and grow their online audience. I’m also a published writer of essays and short stories. As a Christian, I seek to follow in the tradition of artists like Johann Sebastian Bach, dedicating all my work Soli Deo gloria.
Find out more about me here.
•••
“My heart is stirred by a noble theme as I recite my verses for the king; my tongue is the pen of a skillful writer.”
– Psalm 45:1

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